A man who spent 20 years behind bars for murder, only to have his conviction overturned, has sued the city, saying he was wrongly busted and jailed.

Floyd Batten, 41, was convicted of murdering East Flatbush furniture-store owner Igor Khutorsky in a shooting during a 1983 robbery. Batten was a 21-year-old laundry worker at the time.

But in August 2003, a federal judge overturned the conviction, which was based on the testimony of a salesman at the store, the only eyewitness. The salesman said he had spoken a few minutes with the killer, who had first inquired about a sofa bed.

Judge Jack Weinstein found that Batten’s defense lawyer was ineffective – failing to call to the stand a witness who had reported that a Jamaican store employee had been planning an inside job at the store. Batten was neither an employee nor Jamaican.

Batten claimed that prosecutors never turned over the information to his defense lawyer. Prosecutors denied the claim.

Later, the Brooklyn DA’s Office declined to appeal Weinstein’s decision and declined to retry Batten. Batten was released from custody in December 2003. He had been locked up since November 1983.

Now he maintains in a 15-page suit for an unspecified amount of damages, which was filed recently at Brooklyn Supreme Court, that his arrest was unlawful because he didn’t commit a crime and “there was no reason or probable cause” to believe he had.

He maintains the city and the five cops who busted him acted “maliciously, without reasonable or probable cause, and with full knowledge that the charges made before the court were false and untrue.”

He adds, “The acts of the defendants were done willfully, maliciously, outrageously, deliberately, and purposely with the intention to inflict emotional distress upon [him].”

Batten also charges that the city failed to properly train the police and prosecutors in his case.

As a result, he says, he suffered “serious physical and mental injuries, fright, nervous shock and hysteria.” He adds that he suffered “great indignity, humiliation, mental anguish and pain,” and was prevented from “the normal fruits of his activities, including but not limited to social, educational and economic.”